Good books on characterization?

I've never read Maass's book on this topic, but I can tell you that I found Orson Scott Card's book, Characters and Viewpoint, pretty useful.

I don't have a book to recommend, but I would recommend when you get to 50 posts, to post something in the show your work section and get it critiqued. Extra pairs of eyes may help you to pinpoint any issues with your characters or characterisation and you can then target those areas more specifically.

gtanders said:

Hi all,

I recently read Donald Maass's book The Emotional Craft of Fiction and found it very insightful. Does anyone know a book of similar caliber on characterization?

I ask because I recently queried ~10 agents with a MS. I got 2 fulls and 2 partials, all of which ended in rejections. The book is high-concept, near-future SF. Reactions to the pitch have been highly positive, but once they get into the MS, agents are telling me they "don't connect with the voice" or "don't connect with the characters."

Any recommendations appreciated. Thank you!

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Sometimes the "don't connect with the voice" or whatever is a fairly generic thing agents say when they don't feel enthusiastic enough about a book to pick it up (and they do reject most of the fulls they request). It's frustrating to not get more specific feedback on fulls, but I imagine it's hard for agents to get really specific without it sounding like an invitation for negotiation or argument (so if I change this thing you mentioned, can I re-submit etc).

There may not be a problem with your voice or characters, or if it was for these agents, it might not be for others. I had one reject a manuscript telling me they loved pov character A and didn't like pov character B. But character B being the way they were drove a large part of the plot, so I couldn't do much about that It's probably not a good idea to change an entire plot, or character arc, because one agent doesn't like said character. Same thing for the voice. We have enough friendly debates here on AW about story elements we love or hate (or characters from published novels) that it's clear there's no overarching norm.

It is confusing and frustrating, though. Have you have your manuscript beta read by people who are fans of the kind of story it is? It might be good to get more feedback before you gut your story or rewrite it to "fix" the voice, when voice is a very subjective thing.

As for books, there's Nancy Kress's Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint, which has some handy tips.

I don't know of any books specifically on voice, though I'm sure they exist. I've found some of Juliette Wade's blog entries on characterization and on deepening pov to be handy for techniques re inserting character voice into narrative.

http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com/2010/07/know-your-character-inside-and-out.html

http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com/2011/11/checklist-for-deep-pov-in-1st-or-3rd.html

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10311

But these are focused on writing in a particular viewpoint and in a particular style. Not all writers employ these. That's the problem with any craft book or piece of writing advice. There are many approaches and styles, and most are written with the assumption that the reader wants to employ a particular approach that may or may not apply to their own writing.

gtanders said:

Ahhh okay. Thanks to both of you. I'll check out the book and try to bump up the post count. Though I feel a little wary posting part of the novel in a forum. "Published online...?"

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That won't be an issue, since the works for critique are behind a password and are thus not available to the public.

underpope said:

...but I can tell you that I found Orson Scott Card's book, Characters and Viewpoint, pretty useful.

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I second this.

underpope said:

That won't be an issue, since the works for critique are behind a password and are thus not available to the public.

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Also this.

I've read this recently.

I would try some of the books he draws positive examples from, to get a feel for how the authors in question utilise the things he's talking about.

Bear in mind, not all agents feel the same way. There are plenty of books, published and otherwise, without much of the depth Maas values so highly.

One can only conclude from this and other things that emotional connection to characters is not of equal importance to all readers.

Particularly in one of the super niche subgenre I like to read (philosophical fantasy) there is often very little emotional depth to the characters, which is a shame. But a lot of people don't seem bothered and the books are well written so eh.

I do think you can get published if you have a great emotional connection in your novel, even if the writing falls a little short in some areas. (That's not a criticism--just an indication of what readers want out of a story.) But better to have both of course.

gtanders said:

Ahhh okay. Thanks to both of you. I'll check out the book and try to bump up the post count. Though I feel a little wary posting part of the novel in a forum. "Published online...?"

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SYW is a password-protected section, so it's considered private rather than public. And you wouldn't be posting the whole novel anyway.

underpope said:

I've never read Maass's book on this topic, but I can tell you that I found Orson Scott Card's book, Characters and Viewpoint, pretty useful.

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Absolutely!

Jeff

I would recommend Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card. I consider it one of the best writing manuals that I know, and it has a major influence on me as a writer.

Do you have to enjoy Orson Scott Card's fiction to enjoy h is book on writing?

Curious if any of the people recommending are *not* fans of his scifi?

I read Ender's Game and thought it was decent but have disliked pretty much everything else of his I've tried.

I liked Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Hart's Hope and Saints (and his two books on writing). Not keen on anything else of his.

Harlequin said:

I read Ender's Game and thought it was decent but have disliked pretty much everything else of his I've tried.

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Same here, but his discussions about writing are different.

I hesitated to recommend Orson Scott Card's Character and Viewpoint because of how bad his reputation for being a bigotry and homophobia has become. There are a couple of passages in it that are certainly problematic, like using mentally ill people as villains. But most of it is still valuable, and it had a major influence on me as a writer.
Anyway I thought Ender's Game was pretty good. That's the only work of his that I've actually read. I've heard he's sunk to writing a lot of preachy novels in recent years. To be honest, I think he's a better English teacher than he is a novelist.

I agree with what others have said, re: agents. Tastes are subjective, and generic comments are more or less the norm--the publishing industry is small, and agents do not like to get into tricky situations.

As to recommendations for a book on characterisation, I'd say the Art of Character by David Corbett. It is really quite at par with the Maass book. Both of these helped my last novel, and I'd totally recommend both the Corbett book and the class on Characterisation he takes on Litreactor.com.

I hate these kinds of "how to do X" writing advice books. The best books to learn about characterization are novels by good writers which develop characters very well. Read widely, in many genres, and pay attention to how this is done by the good ones. Good onesm IMO:

Rex Stout
John D. MacDonald
Carson McCullers
Flannery O'Connor
Graham Greene
John LeCarré
Philip K. Dick
Edith Wharton
John Steinbeck
Willa Cather
Ursula LeGuin
Craig Johnson
Terry Pratchett
James M. Cain
H.G. Wells

Characters develop, generally, by what they do, not by descriptions of what they are.

caw

blacbird said:

I hate these kinds of "how to do X" writing advice books. The best books to learn about characterization are novels by good writers which develop characters very well. ...

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Ideally, yes, we'd all be able to read a novel and analyze it on multiple levels to parse what worked and how it worked (or didn't work, and how it didn't), then apply it to our own work, but not all of us can do that without a little help. Plus there's some subjectivity involved; some books people consider brilliant, others consider trash or can't connect with at all. How to write books can give us terms for what we're seeing, and a way to understand and apply it, and a lens with which to focus our attention. Some of us aren't as far along in the journey as others...

blacbird said:

Characters develop, generally, by what they do, not by descriptions of what they are.

caw

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Yep. Generally speaking, showing and not telling wins.

I agree with the bird that reading is one of the best ways to absorb good techniques, whether they be punctuation and sentence structure, storytelling, or characterization. All the suggested writers are very good, though they may not all employ styles that would be marketable in all genres today. What's interesting is how the good writers break many of the rules we're taught. I reread some stories by O'Conner recently, and I was surprised at how "telly" her narrative actually is. I suspect a lot of writing groups would cut someone to ribbons if they approached theirs in a similar way. But she "tells" in a way, and with a voice, that pulls the reader in anyway.

I admire it, but I don't think I want to emulate it in the fantasy novel I'm struggling with tearing my hair out over working on.

There are plenty more writers any of us can add to that list, of course, including many successful genre writers we personally admire. Don't neglect the newly popular either, as they can indicate which techniques and styles are popular in the current market (even if we don't know yet which ones will stand the test of time).

However, craft books still have their place. I never really understood narrative viewpoint, for instance, until I read a number of discussions of it in craft books and on the web. In fact, there are some maddening differences in approach and terminology as outlined in these books, but after reading a number of these, I finally got a sense for it and learned why some narratives give me a headache while others pull me in.

Some people may be almost completely osmotic in their approach to learning, others may be much more about analyzing and dissecting techniques. Many of us are somewhere in between.

I put craft books in the same category as a good critical deconstruction: something which talks about which books work at doing what, and why.

In general I dno't read craft books and dislike the idea of something so dry, but I have enjoyed the Donald Mass book, primarily because it reads like the above--taking apart various books that work with long passages and examples from across different genres. That's very useful to me. I do prefer a good critical review, but those can be hard to come by, and you have to sift through a lot of twaddle to find them.

neandermagnon said:

I don't have a book to recommend, but I would recommend when you get to 50 posts, to post something in the show your work section and get it critiqued. Extra pairs of eyes may help you to pinpoint any issues with your characters or characterisation and you can then target those areas more specifically.

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I would also recommend SYW. From the comments you received, and the fact the critique came up more than once, it sounds like you either did a lot of filtering that left them at arm's length or you just never developed much character voice/personality?